Originally posted by YUCCA
Really no much flight experience. My uncle owns a hanger and does all the repairs on aircraft for his airport (helena montana) and he also owns a plane that he leases out (he's afriad of hieghts) so he once asked his good friend (who is an instructor) to take me up for a lil while. Thats really the only thing i got going for me at the moment.
But once again, would it be wise to go ahead and get all my ratings and certification and what not before attending a 4 year college and instruct on my free time (and i hear it would look to the guys who let you into the militaries pilot school)
Was also thinking about maybe tryin to get into the Air Gaurd and apply for the UPT slot after college.
Thoughts on this?
Here's my .02 and FWIW thoughts...
Since you don't have a lot of flight time at the moment, find an instructor at your field and ask if you sit in on some ground sessions and ride backseat for a few flights so you can get a good idea of what is involved in the training. Key lessons I can think of you'd want to sit in on would be any cross country flights for private, or instrument training, and any of the commercial ground or flight. All three ratings have at least some cross country flight requirements where they probably wouldn't mind having someone in the back, and the ground sessions get progressively tougher per respective rating.
That should at least give you something to think on for deciding if it's a viable career path for you.
As for the most cost effective way to do it...
Military;
upside - they'll cover everything if you make pilot
downside - 4 year degree prerequisite for most and you have to make "the cut" to pilot.
alternate - get any mil job, pay for your private rating on your own, have your G.I. benifits cover advanced ratings and college classes when your hitch is up.
Self financed;
Saw an article in one of the flight magazines a while back called the $250,000.00 mistake, which discussed poor choices for flight training. If you make enough poor choices, you could easily hit that figure and possibly have an interest rate on top of it.
upside - can do your ratings at more of your own pace and choose your training environment.
downside - you have to pay for it.
The big picture;
To get any sort of paying job (and the pay will be terrible at first) you'll have to have a minimum of a commercial and instrument ratings appropriate to what you'll be flying. With those minimums, you'll be very limited as to what jobs you qualify for.
Once you hit the 500 hour mark, you have a few more options.
At 1200 hours, a lot more options. At 1500 hours, add on another rating and you've got most bases covered. However, even with the hours and ratings, pretty much no one is going to talk to you until you have at least 1000 hours and most of the real paying jobs are going to require 2000 hours. There are a very few exceptions to this rule, though.
Now that the flight time is covered; any of the major airlines are going to require a 4 year degree. Most reqionals require a 2 year degree. Some cargo or scenic tour places just prefer degrees.
The kicker to all the "requirements" is that if you know someone on the inside, there are loopholes to get around a lot of them.
So, how do you get all these hours built up? Military is pretty obvious. Going the self financed route, the most common paths are either working as a flight instructor or something called "bought time." Flight instructing is self explanitory. "Bought time" is referreing to places where you pay them to let you sit in the right seat until you have enough hours to move to the left seat. That's becoming the more common option lately.
If you want to combine the flight training with a degree program, there are also multiple options. Embry Riddle, Mesa pilot development program, or Utah Valley State college are probably the leaders in that area.
If you want to try and crunch numbers to figure out a cost, here's a formula that I've found to be pretty accurate;
Find out the going rate for plane rental and an instructor where you're going to do your training.
Multiply required flight training hours by 1.5 (plane rental cost)
Add instructor cost per hour to plane rental cost.
For each hour of flight, add 2 hours of ground (instructor cost only).
For example - regs say you must have 40 hours of flight training for your private pilot. National average is closer to 60 for actually completing it. 60 hours plane rental and instructor + 120 hours of ground with instructor only, should give you a rough estimate on cost with a little room for fudge factor on the high end if you put a lot of effort into being proactive in your training. That number wont include things like books, toys, and testing fees.
If you want to see what's required by the regs for a particular rating, you can google these for the airplane ratings;
FAR 61.109(a) (private)
FAR 61.65(d) (instument)
FAR 61.129(a) (commercial)
FAR 61.159(a) (airline)
FAR 135.243 (the 500/1200 hour thing)
Hope that all makes some sense. Let me know if I can provide any more confusion for you.
